Time and Time Again
by mysterymachine
Summary: 1827 AU — In which Tsuna and Hibari travel through time and space into parallel worlds, due to a genetic mutation that causes them to spontaneously travel through time, disappearing from view just to arrive in another place unpredictably. Their timelines converge naturally as they try to find each other time and time again.


"Time travel, I maintain, is possible. The paradoxes of time travel are oddities, not impossibilities. They prove only this much, which few would have doubted: that a possible world where time travel took place would be a most strange world, different in fundamental ways from the world we think is ours."

— David Lewis, The Paradoxes of Time

**:::  
**

**PROLOGUE  
**

Red is the color of fate. They say a red thread knots two people, two soul mates. They become connected by the thread as destined lovers, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break. But honestly, to Tsuna, it sounded suspicious. He didn't even know where to start. There were around seven billion people in the world and you just made up one of them. What were the odds that you were going to find the perfect one, the one meant for you? That among all these encounters, God has arranged a special someone for you. One made before you were born. It was stupid. He didn't want to believe it.

Oh, but he wanted to believe it. Tsuna wanted to believe that there was a special person for him, and that he could become a special someone to another person. But he didn't realize, couldn't realize before it all happened, that the bond of fate was invisible to everyone. And that it led to an unseen person who was your destiny.

And that's why Tsuna knew he fell in love with Hibari the moment they met.

**:::**

How did it feel? How did it feel? Although Hibari prided himself in his clever word choice and his eloquent speech, he couldn't quite describe it. Sometimes it felt as though his attention has wandered for just an instant. Then, with a start, he realized that the book he was holding, the living room, the about-to-whistle tea kettle in the kitchen: all of these have vanished. He was standing up to his ankles in ice water in a ditch along an unidentified rural route. He waited a minute to see if maybe he would just snap right back to his book, his apartment. After about five minutes of swearing and shivering and hoping to hell he could just disappear, he started walking in any direction, which would eventually yield a farmhouse, where he had the option of stealing or explaining. Stealing would sometimes land him in jail, but explaining is more tedious and time-consuming and involves lying anyway, and also sometimes results in being hauled off to jail, so what the hell.

Sometimes he felt as though he stood up too quickly even if he was lying in bed half asleep. He could hear blood rushing in his head, feel vertiginous falling sensations. His hands and feet were tingling and then they weren't there at all. He lost himself again. It only takes an instant, he had just enough time to try to hold on, to flail around (possibly damaging himself or valuable possessions) and then he was skidding across the deep bamboo forest of China, 1800 BC, and hit his head on someone's hut, causing this person to open this door and start screaming because there was a man passed out at her feet. He woke up inside the hut concussed with a woman leaving to get some water, or perhaps to gather food. Mercifully, he lapsed back into unconsciousness and woke up again hours later in his own bed with his lover leaning over him, looking very worried.

Sometimes Hibari felt euphoric. Everything is sublime and has an aura, and suddenly he was intensely nauseated and then, gone. He was throwing up on some suburban geraniums, or his shoes, or his very own bathroom floor three days ago, or a dark alley in Venice, circa 1903.

How does it feel?

It feels exactly like one of those dreams in which you suddenly realize that you have to take a test you haven't studied for, or when you find your bus card right as the driver pulls up to the stop.

Is there logic, a rule to all this coming and going, all this dislocation? Is there a way to stay put, to embrace the present with every cell? He didn't know and it certainly pissed him off that he didn't. There were clues; as with any disease there were patterns, possibilities. Exhaustion, loud noises, stress, standing up suddenly, flashing light-any of these can trigger an episode. But: Hibari could be reading the Namimori News, green tea in hand and Tsuna dozing beside him on their bed and suddenly he was watching his sixteen-year-old self beat up some useless herbivores, delinquents trying to defy his rule. Some of these episodes last only moments; it's like listening to a car radio that's having trouble holding on to a station. Hibari found himself in crowds, audiences, mobs, just as often as he was alone in a car, a train, or in school in the middle of the night.

It was frustrating, really. He just wanted to stay in one place, with the one person he wanted to be with. Why couldn't time just stop?

**:::**

**Disclaimer:** The first two passages are from the j-drama, Akai Ito.


End file.
